Did Mary Baker Eddy ever revive Calvin Frye from death?

We are sometimes asked about Mary Baker Eddy reviving Calvin A. Frye, her secretary, from a critically ill, comatose, or death state.¹ In fact, several accounts appear in the collections of The Mary Baker Eddy Library, and in books published by The Christian Science Publishing Society. Are they all versions of one incident, or do they represent multiple crises? Were there eyewitnesses?

Accounts indicate that Eddy intervened in health emergencies involving Frye on at least five occasions between about 1886 and 1910. None of his conditions was ever medically diagnosed. With this in mind, let’s examine four accounts written by individuals who witnessed the events.² 

Clara Shannon reported an undated incident that would have coincided with her service in Eddy’s household in Concord, New Hampshire:

One day, while I was writing to Mrs. Eddy’s dictation, she sent me with a message to Mr. Frye, who was in his room. When I reached the door, which was open, I saw him lying on his back on the carpet, apparently lifeless. I returned to our Leader and told her about it, saying, “It seems as though he has fainted.” She immediately rose and we both went to his room. She kneeled beside him and lifted his arm, which fell inert. Then she began to talk to him. I had been praying for him, but what she said to him was a revelation, to which I listened in wonder. Such heavenly words and tenderness, such expressions of love I have never heard, telling him the truth of man’s relationship to God. After a while he opened his eyes, and, as soon as Mother saw that he was becoming conscious, her voice changed, and most severely she rebuked the error that seemed to be attacking him. Her voice and manner were so different, according to the need, that I was deeply impressed.

 

Presently, she told him to rise on his feet, and gave him her hand to help him to get up. Then she turned round and went out of the room down the passage where she had been sitting. Then she called out, “Calvin, come here!” And he followed her. She spoke to him for several minutes, striving to wake him up—at times, thundering against the error. Then she said, “Now you can go back to your room.” He went from the passage towards his room, but before he entered she called him again and talked to him, and this was repeated several times.

 

I said, “Oh, Mother! Couldn’t you let him sit down a few minutes?” She said, “No, if he sits down he may not waken again—he must be aroused—we mustn’t let him die—he is not quite awake yet!” She began to talk to him again and reminded him of the time when she rented a farm for one day, not very far from Concord, when she, Martha and Mr. Frye together drove out and spent the day there, and she began to remind him of the experiences of that day. That reached him, and she said, “You haven’t forgotten it, Calvin?” and he said, “No, Mother.” And he laughed heartily. Then she talked more of the Truth to him and told him he could go back to his room and his “watch.”³

 

She explained to me that when you speak the truth to anyone, if the truth you speak causes him to laugh, cry, or get angry, you have reached the thought that needed correction.⁴

John Salchow, who worked on Eddy’s staff, offered an eyewitness memory from 1903: 

My sister [Maggie Salchow] was then serving in Mrs. Eddy’s household as maid. I remember coming down the second floor hall on my way to Mr. Frye’s room and seeing Maggie running out of his room very much agitated. She told me that Calvin Frye was dead, said she had taken hold of him and his flesh was cold and stiff. As I stepped forward I could see him through the open door crumpled up at his desk, his face hanging white and limp against his chest, and his arms and hands inert. Just then Mrs. Eddy’s voice came from her room. She was out of my line of vision, but from the sound of her voice I could tell just about where she was. Apparently she had not received any response to her ring for Mr. Frye and was leaving her room to find out why he did not answer. I heard her voice coming nearer. It was evident that she had entered Mr. Frye’s room and was approaching him, though from the sound of her voice I am sure she did not come directly up to him but stood still in the center of the room. I heard her ask over and over again, “Calvin, do you hear me?” It seemed to me that this went on for five minutes with no response on his part or sign of life. Then I heard him say very faintly, “Yes, Mother, I hear you.”⁵ 

George Kinter also recalled a time when Eddy revived Frye in the winter of 1905, after he was found lifeless: 

Mr. Frye had passed on—he had no pulse, he was stone cold—and rigid. His closed eyes were fixedly set, and there were none of the common evidences of life….

 

But when our Leader arrived, all this was changed; she began at once to treat him, making such bold, audible declarations as to cause me to shrink back lest my now awakened sense of the gravity of the situation might prove abortive of her heroic endeavors.…

 

Her efforts were intensive to the highest degree. I remember quite well many of her utterances & actions. She said, e.g.,—“… Calvin, all is Life! Life!! Undying Life. Say God is my Life. Say it after me! Say it, so that I shall know you realize it! Say it in a whisper, if need be, but make the declaration for yourself. Declare—I can help myself.”

 

Intermittently she chafed his hands, slapped his face sharply, and shook him briskly until, at last, after the lapse of an hour, he moved slightly and then spoke, at first in slow, low, guttural tones and spasmodically but, at length, coherently, until finally we could hear him say such things as “Don’t call me back” and “Let me go, I am so tired,” etc. etc.

 

To each of which Mrs. Eddy responded, “Oh, yes,—We shall persist in calling you back, for you have not been away. You have only been dreaming and now that you have awakened out of that dreamy sleep, you are not tired. You love life, Calvin, and its activities too well to fall asleep. Thank the dear God, who is Mind, is omnipresent Good, you do not concede any claim of the material senses. You don’t have to, & knowing the Truth as you have practised it, lo, these many, many years, you know that divine Love is the liberator, and you are freed from the thraldom of hypnotism, alive unto God, your Saviour from sin, sickness & death.

 

“Now then, give God thanks for He hath redeemed you. You are strong and well.”

 

Another half hour was spent substantially as I have shown, in which period Mr. Frye conferred with us all quite intelligently….⁶

Yet another account of similar healing appears in Adam H. Dickey’s reminiscence. Dickey did not specify the year it took place. He served in Eddy’s home at Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, from 1908 to 1910. He recalled this:  

… All this time Mr. Frye’s head was hanging limp on his shoulder. I had hold of the back of the rocking chair in which we had placed him to steady him. I placed my hand on his head to lift it up. Mrs. Eddy instantly stopped me and said, “Do not touch him. Leave him entirely to me.” Again, she repeated her calls to him to arouse himself and remain with her. It was now something like half an hour since Calvin had first been found, and while those who were looking on at our Leader’s efforts to arouse him had not the slightest doubt that she would succeed in awakening him, yet the time seemed to pass without any appreciable response to her work. This did not discourage her. She redoubled her efforts and fairly shouted to Mr. Frye her commands that he awake. In a moment he raised his head and drew a long, deep breath….⁷ 

In her 1998 biography Mary Baker Eddy, author Gillian Gill, who is not a Christian Scientist, offered her perspective on these experiences, commenting, “I find the case of Calvin Frye’s various resurrections fascinating but am somewhat at a loss as to how to interpret them.” While she does not feel that Frye was dead, she observes:

The healings of Calvin Frye thus take on an extraordinary significance because of the stage in Mrs. Eddy’s life at which they occurred, and because they were witnessed and later attested to by so many people. In the view of Christian Scientists, they prove conclusively that, at the height of her powers, Mrs. Eddy could raise a person from the dead.⁸ 

Eddy wrote in Science and Health, “The Bible calls death an enemy, and Jesus overcame death and the grave instead of yielding to them.”⁹ The incidents recounted here point to her effective response to extreme situations. Questions about the nature of Frye’s condition are probably inevitable; the recorded experiences run counter to conventional reactions to illness and death. Restorations from death through prayer are recorded in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, and by Christians over the centuries. The Bible notes varying reactions to this phenomenon; these words from Psalms are attributed to David: “For thou hast delivered my soul from death: wilt not thou deliver my feet from falling, that I may walk before God in the light of the living?”¹⁰